Your Guide to Sick Leave Policies

"The policy for sick leave is purportedly to benefit employees when the need arises."

Sick leave is one of the types of paid benefits granted to regular employees - regularization in the Philippines are granted to employees on the sixth month of tenure. Employees can avail of this benefit when you are unable to report to work due to an illness, accident, or any other debilitating medical causes. Even with this absence, it is a company's obligation to pay you equivalent to a full-day salary as mandated in the Philippine Labor Laws, given that an employee still has leave "credits" equivalent to seven work days or a total of 56 hours in a year.

Sick leaves, however, are the most abused benefits everywhere with employees thinking they can just make up medical excuses to be absent from work. Although it's inviting to have a paid leave using your sick leave, there are actually more important reasons why employees should not use sick leaves for the wrong reasons.

Understanding your Sick Leave Policy

Although technically called "sick" leaves and used supposedly only when you're sick, some times will require you to get advance leave approval for a non-emergency sick leave, such as a visit to your doctor. For sudden occurrences, such as a sudden onset of fever that prevents you to report to work, a standard policy on sick leave would be to inform the human resource office and/or your supervisor at least a couple hours before your shift. Failing to call may invalidate your sick leave and consider it unauthorized.

You may use your sick leaves for medical, dental, or optical appointments, and in the following medical cases:

• Suffering from a sickness or injury;
• Maternity reasons;
• To care for a sick or injured member of the family;
• If reporting to work can jeopardize your health and that of your colleagues;
• Death of a member of your immediate family.

A sick leave policy is to have your medical leave supported by a medical certificate as proof and for documentation purposes.

Why You Should Save Your Sick Leave

Sick leaves are created as benefits for a reason because, after all, we are not perfectly healthy. You can never tell when you'll get seriously ill and need your sick leaves just when you've used up all your credits. With your sick leaves untouched and a medical situation arrives, you still enough leave to cover your entire absence.

Policies on sick leave entitles employees to paid leaves, but also mandates the following when you are left with a limited to zero leave credits:

• Salary deduction equivalent to the number of days you are absent;
• You will not earn vacation and sick leave during holidays

Sick Leave Abuse

The policy for sick leave is purportedly to benefit employees when the need arises. This is why abusing your sick leave when you use it on non-medical and non-emergency events are never a good idea. You also risk losing your job when found loitering around the city when you called in for a sick leave.

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